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Yale caught up in green card fraud
By Gitanjali Hazarika

Post Yale fraud: It is unimportant to define what tricks a conman adopts to make his game plan successful. What is more important is the method he adopts to make his trick realistic and how. The questions should be more about where he got his accessories from to pull wool over everyone's eyes.

Ralph Cucciniello, a super swindler, called the shots till he was caught in his own web of deceit. To the Irish populace, he was the man who could get them green cards for $5,000. To the police, he was a phony, who swindled his way rich. His last role of being a Yale Law faculty and an expert in immigration law was a fast earner for him.

The con artist tried his hand in everything from being a television producer to a psychologist and a nursing home operator. Why he couldn't utilize his grey cells more productively, I wonder.

Now when law enforcement officials in New York and Connecticut begin their hunt for more fraud victims, one cannot evade this question: How did a conman, under federal witness protection program, find a parking space in the hallowed halls of Yale complete with an identification card and email address?

Inspector Timothy Reardon of the New Haven State's Attorney's Office, who was the man behind the conman's arrest, was the first to get a whiff of the happenings within the Irish community. The Irish people were euphoric that a certain law professor at Yale discovered a loophole in the immigration laws, through which he could secure them green cards in a jiffy. Reardon's antenna picked up the signals and opened an investigation into Cucciniello, 55. This led to the conman’s arrest by New York City police on charges of "grand larceny and impersonating an attorney."

Few of the tricked Irish immigrants, when they even after paying the money, failed to get the promised green card, complained to Olwyn Triggs, a private investigator. Triggs triggered off the siren bells that helped NY police uncover the cheat.

Irish people flew, drove, and walked in to the Yale campus where the scamster had an "office" and actually gave him money to get a green card. Others mailed him bank checks through mail to a post office box within the Yale campus.

The Yale Law School disowned Cucciniello stating that he was never part of the law school as a paid employee. Though the School remained tight-lipped about the professor under whom he worked, apparently, sources confirm that Cucciniello worked for Steven B. Duke, a professor since 1961, who teaches "Convicting the Innocent," and teaches and writes on criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, and drug policy.

Cucciniello's past records are also colorful and his mastery of the art of conning people is illustrious. Even though he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in a similar duping case in New Jersey, he never served time. He was an informant for the federal government and was placed in the federal witness protection program. None knows for certain why he went into the program, but possibly that is the way he could evade the police dragnet so far.

Cucciniello is charged only in a few cases in New York. The police believe the majority of the crimes occurred in Connecticut on the Yale campus, and so is out of NY's grasp.

Again, I conclude with this thought, why he succeeded is not the story, but the way he committed fraud leaves a lot to introspect on part of the Law School's administration. That Cucciniello discovered a loophole in the immigration law was, for sure, hogwash, but that the School system has a loophole is there for all to see.

Posted on: 05/29/2007 01:23 AM | Number of feedback 0

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University of Michigan Ann Arbor School of Law

The University of Michigan Ann Arbor School of Law or the Michigan School of Law as it is popularly known is one of the oldest law schools of the U.S. and it consistently ranks among the top 10 law schools of the U.S. in rankings published by different sources and organizations. Michigan Law School is considered to have one of the best campuses and collegiate environment among U.S. law schools.